11 ways the Americans can beat Belgium

Belgium isn’t on the typical American sports fan’s radar, but the tiny European nation’s intimidating soccer team isn’t about to be ignored. The squad, lovingly nicknamed the Red Devils, sports a football-style murderers’ row of elite, young players who are favored to knock out the U.S. when they meet Tuesday in the Round of 16 of the FIFA World Cup. (It also has one of the most expensive World Cup teams, by this calculation.)

That hardly means Belgium is unbeatable, however. And the Internet is chock full of advice on just how Jürgen Klinsmann’s squad can go about pulling off the upset. One of the keys, according to ESPN’s Adrian Melville, is one-on-one defending in order to slow Belgium’s more aggressive attacking style. Meanwhile, the World Soccer Talk blog highlights five keys to U.S. victory, including keeping pressure on Belgium’s midfield, maintaining an aggressive counterattack, and keeping the ball away from Belgian superstar playmaker Eden Hazard.

One way to support the U.S. team is the time-honored boycott of all things favored and dear to the opposition. Here is MarketWatch’s list of Belgian specialities to be assiduously, if briefly, avoided during Tuesday’s showdown.

Left: Clint Dempsey celebrates after scoring the U.S. team’s first goal in this World Cup.

Pain-less Tuesday

Lest you lend tacit support to Belgium, not only should you, the U.S. fan, not have been breakfasting today at Tiffany’s (Audrey Hepburn, b. 1929, Brussels); you’ll also need to steer clear of Le Pain Quotidien. The chain, a sort of ur-Panera, is known for its fresh-baked bread, its elaborate pastry selection and its communal table. It was founded in 1990 at 16 rue Dansaert in Brussels. It’s just added three locations in Chicago to expand a U.S. footprint that previously included New York, Washington and Los Angeles. It has more than 200 cafes in 17 countries, all told.

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Comic conflict

The red-cowlick haircut; the fussy dog; those three-quarter-length pants. There’s nothing even vaguely American about Tintin, the boy reporter and crime solver created in the 1920s by Belgian newspaper cartoonist George Remi (using the pen name Herge).

Of course, sartorial oddity hasn’t stopped Tintin from becoming, and remaining, a publishing juggernaut. The 20-odd Tintin comic albums currently in print have been translated into 70 languages and still sell about a million copies a year, according to the Atlantic. All this despite the fact that Tintin’s various adventures include some distasteful elements, among them racism, anti-Semitism and animal cruelty. (Herge himself flirted with fascism, though he later repudiated it, and he was briefly banned from newspaper work after World War II for having cooperated with Nazi occupiers.)

So how does Tintin stack up against the U.S. comic-book industry? The brand’s annual sales of roughly $11 million pale next to the estimated $725 million’s worth of comic books sold in North America last year. That said, there’s no better time than this week to fight Belgian subcultural dominance by buying some comics that are American-made — perhaps an uplifting graphic novel featuring The Dark Knight or The Walking Dead.

Everett Collection

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‘The Muscles from Brussels’

The former kickboxer known as “The Muscles from Brussels” is arguably the world’s biggest Belgian-born box-office star (tough luck for you, Ms. Hepburn). Movies in which he played a leading role have grossed $555 million worldwide, according to movie-industry data website TheNumbers.com. And most years, Van Damme is still good for two or three straight-to-video punchfests and a big-budget cameo or two.

If you’re in the U.S., you won’t get a chance to snub the 53-year-old action hero at the box office this weekend. But if all the flopping on the World Cup pitches has you longing for some more convincingly staged hand-to-hand combat, make sure your Netflix queue bleeds red, white and blue. Stick with the likes of homegrown heroes Sly Stallone and Steven Seagal, or even naturalized American Arnold Schwarzenegger. Avoid 1994’s “Timecop” (Van Damme’s best-selling star vehicle to date), “Streetfighter” and anything from the “Universal Soldier” series.

Last but not least, beware of hidden Van Damme. You may think of “Expendables 2” as an all-American shoot-’em-up (Stallone! Chuck Norris! Terry Crews!). But who’s the bad guy? That would be Jean Vilain (seriously), played by none other than Mr. Van Damme. And sorry, kids, no “Kung Fu Panda 2” for you this week: That’s Van Damme providing the voice of Master Croc.

Art Institute of Chicago

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Pipe dream?

If, as a U.S. partisan, you were to find yourself strolling Tuesday along the Chicago lakefront, do not be taken in by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Magritte exhibition, which opened last week (and, yes, is likely destined to be a blockbuster). Instead, eschewing that Belgian-born artist for the day, continue southward for another 2.5 miles to Soldier Field, named Monday as the city’s primary watch site for Tuesday’s match.

Bloomberg

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Stella performance

Let’s face it: Stella Artois isn’t an easy beer to avoid if you’re looking for a nice, quenching lager while enjoying the game at a local bar with a modest number of taps. Heineken
HINKF, +0.00%
isn’t a bad Stella alternative, but, on the other hand, the U.S. could face Heineken-producing Holland and its band of orange-clad divers down the road if things go to plan. Budweiser? Well, that scores no patriotism points: Like Stella, Budweiser’s in the brand portfolio of Leuven, Belgium–based Anheuser-Busch InBev
BUD, -0.35%

So maybe the best non-Belgian session beer is a refreshing but substantive Brooklyn Lager? Though, wait a minute: The company uses yeast from Belgium. This is proving too difficult. The Belgians, staked an advantage with their centuries of brewing history and 450 beer varieties, have won this round.

Haute chocolate

Sorry, but Tuesday should be a chocolate-free day in the U.S., given that Belgium invented chocolate pralines.

The big brands include Neuhaus and Leonidas, both of which have stores in the U.S. and make their chocolates in Belgium. Leonidas even boasts that it air freights its entire assortment to its Manhattan locations every other Friday.

Godiva, meanwhile, is now owned by Yildiz Holding, a Turkish company. And Guylian, known for its seashells pralines, is owned by South Korea’s Lotte Group.

As for more everyday chocolates, Mondelez International Inc.
MDLZ, -0.65%
headquartered in the Chicago area, owns Cote d’Or, another Belgian brand.

Restoration Hardware

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A textile experience

As in the brewing realm, Belgium has an undeniable claim to fame in the world of tapestries, lace and linens and, essentially, all things textile. The adjective “Belgian” seems to have gained further currency in recent years as a byword for quality among such retail favorites as Crate & Barrel; West Elm; and, as shown here, Restoration Hardware
RH, -1.09%

The sulfurous sprout

The Brussels sprout, which resembles a tiny, slightly gnarly cabbage, likely originated in Brussels, at least according to Wikipedia, although the earliest versions may have been cultivated in Rome. The vegetable showed up in force in Belgium some time in the 16th century and remains a popular green today.

The sprout’s main nutritional value centers on its high levels of vitamin A, vitamin C, folic acid and dietary fiber. However, traditionally, the sprout is often prepared by boiling, which can render it soft — and gray — and produce a sulfuric odor that some find entirely repellent.

The Food Network’s Ina Garten, a.k.a. the Barefoot Contessa, has a workaround that has become a popular cooking method . She recommends roasting sprouts with a simple coating of olive oil, salt and pepper. Et voila, no satanic odor.

Then again, a Heinz survey from 2008 found the Brussels sprout to be America’s most-hated vegetable, so maybe you don’t need us to tell you to avoid it for a day.

Shutterstock.com

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No diving

Diving in football leaves a bitter taste with your opponent, and the Belgian endive did the same for 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. The then–Massachusetts governor delivered a classic campaign-trail gaffe when he told a group of Iowa farmers that they should think about ditching corn for the leafy veggie.

No waffling, either

It’s hard to get more American than the Waffle House, the roadside-eatery chain that in many parts of the country is synonymous with interstate-highway travel. And so it’s worth noting that to support Team USA in the World Cup, the Waffle House is pushing a boycott of Belgian waffles.

“We support America. We don’t support Belgian waffles,” a Waffle House representative told TMZ.

Belgian waffles were invented by Maurice Vermersch of Brussels, who originally named them Brussels waffles, according to the online Antwerp Tourist Guide. But when he brought them to America at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, he changed the name because he found so few Americans knew what or where Brussels was.

What makes a waffle Belgian? The batter is based on yeast rather than baking powder, which makes them lighter and fluffier.

You won’t find any of those puffed-up concoctions at a Waffle House anyway, just your single or double waffle with sausage or bacon or city ham — city ham, meaning, you’d suppose, ham from some town in Tennessee or North Carolina, not country ham, like from some country called Belgium.

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Bureaucratic Brussels

The Belgian capital, Brussels, is the headquarters of the European Union and houses all its main institutions and the many international civil servants who work in them. For euroskeptics, the trouble starts right there, in the fear that a bureaucracy of unelected eurocrats are making decisions that override sovereign rights and impose a one-size-fits-all model on an entire continent. The record number of anti-EU and far-right candidates to be elected in recent European parliament elections suggest a a growing number of Europeans are hostile to the EU project.

For the city of Brussels, the thousands of workers from member states have formed a new social class that locals claim has artificially inflated real-estate prices and pushed out many former residents. Visitors often complain that the city lacks character, that it’s too gray, and that the mixture of French, Dutch and Flemish languages is too confusing.

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